VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TERMS. 263 



rily call up an idea they do not want to excite. The 

 circumstance originally casual, thus becomes regu- 

 larly a part of the connotation of the word. 



It is this continual incorporation of circumstances 

 originally accidental, into the permanent signification 

 of words, which is the cause that there are so few 

 exact synonymes. It is this also which renders the 

 dictionary meaning of a word,, by universal remark so 

 imperfect an exponent of its real meaning. The dic- 

 tionary meaning is marked out in a broad, blunt way, 

 and probably includes all that was originally necessary 

 for the correct employment of the term ; but in pro- 

 cess of time so many collateral associations adhere to 

 words, that whoever should attempt to use them with 

 no other guide than the dictionary would confound a 

 thousand nice distinctions and subtle shades of mean- 

 ing which dictionaries take no account of; as we 

 notice in the use of a language in conversation or 

 writing by a foreigner not thoroughly master of it. 

 The history of a word, by showing the causes which 

 determined its use, is in these cases a better guide to 

 its employment than any definition ; for definitions 

 can only show its meaning at the particular time, or 

 at most the series of its successive meanings, but its 

 history may show the law by which the succession was 

 produced. The word gentleman, for instance, to the 

 correct employment of which a dictionary would be 

 no guide, originally meant simply a man of .family, 

 From this it came by degrees to connote all such qua- 

 lities or adventitious circumstances as were usually 

 found to belong to persons of family. This considera- 

 tion at once explains why in one of its vulgar accep- 

 tations it means any one who lives without labour, in 

 another without manual labour, and in its more ele- 

 vated signification it has in every age signified the 



